Rising Wages: Has China Lost Its Global Labor Advantage?

Dennis Yang, Vivian Chen () and Ryan Monarch
Additional contact information
Vivian Chen: The Conference Board

No 5008, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We document dramatic rising wages in China for the period 1978-2007 based on multiple sources of aggregate statistics. Although real wages increased seven-fold during the period, growth was uneven across ownership types, industries and regions. Since the late 1990s, the wages of state-owned enterprises have increased rapidly and wage disparities between skill-intensive and labor-intensive industries have widened. Comparisons of international data show that China's manufacturing wage has already converged to that of Asian emerging markets, but China still enjoys enormous labor cost advantages over its neighboring developed economies. Our analysis suggests that China's wage growth will stabilize to a moderate pace in the near future.

Keywords: wage growth; aggregate statistics; China; international comparison (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J31 O5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2010-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-tra
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

Published - published in: Pacific Economic Review, 2010, 15 (4), 482-504

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Related works:
Journal Article: RISING WAGES: HAS CHINA LOST ITS GLOBAL LABOR ADVANTAGE? (2010)
Working Paper: Rising Wages: Has China Lost Its Global Labor Advantage? (2009)
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